


it's your heart (it's alive)

by weatheredlaw



Series: all the stars [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-21 02:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4811792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I am Ladan," she said, when the Seeker asked. "Who are you?"</i> </p><p>or: Ladan Adaar, runt of a Vashoth, becomes the Herald of Andraste. She's taking it in stride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's your heart (it's alive)

**Author's Note:**

> so! i don't really give my inquisitor's original names, this would have been my first one. but i made her and i just got so ATTACHED so quick, and i have all these feels in my head so HERE SHE IS, making her triumphant fanfiction debut. she even gets her own series god dammit.

"Sweet one. Little thing. Ladan." Strong arms that laid her gently into bed. "Would you like a story, before you rest your eyes?"

"A song," she said, and ma laughed and nodded. They had no songs from their past, only the soft tunes Ladan knew from wandering the markets. Marcher songs, da called them. Good, hearty songs. Songs that meant something. Da loved Marchers. Ma said it was because they reminded him of his own past. And because they weren't afraid of some Vashoth who didn't want to cause any trouble. 

And they had wonderful songs, Ladan thought. Hard faces, but soft voices. Perfect for singing. Like ma.

" _There once was a farmer who had three daughters, and in the winter he did go adventuring._ "

 

 

 

"Here it is, here it is--"

"Aram--"

"Peace, love, I found it." Da hauled out a great tome, blowing dust off the cover. "Oh, this should be grand." 

Ma looked worried. "I think she's too young--"

"Too young to learn about dragons? Nonsense. Ladan, _kadan_ , look here." He opened the book, the pages yellowed and worn under his fingers. "Look how beautiful." She felt her eyes go wide, saw her mother's look of resignation before she began to read with them. They both had dragon stories. Ladan pressed her nose into the pages.

She wanted a dragon story. And maybe ma could see that. Maybe that's why she pried the book gently from her hands, and set it aside. " _Parshaara,_ " she said quietly. " _Imekari_ , bake with me." And that's all it took, then. The smell of flour and butter, the feel of sugar stuck to the tips of her fingers. She could still taste the breads they made in the fall, the sweet cookies with jam in the center she made on her mother's birthday. It was a life she thought she could go on living forever.

Until she could not.

 

 

 

"Not everyone is as kind as a Marcher," Da would say. And that meant something -- Marchers, for all their sweet songs, were brutal, angry, marked and colored by their past. A Vashoth family blended well, but outsiders could spot them, and outsiders did fear them. She was still so small, barely twelve, the first time she met a Ferelden. A woman, wearing soft skirts of the most beautiful blue, holding them carefully as she traipsed through the market. Running from the Blight, they said. Ladan didn't know what that meant, really, but she knew ma and da were afraid of it, and what it might mean. 

The Ferelden woman fainted when she saw her, not that anyone else noticed, no one except the woman's husband, who shouted, but no one came. "A brute! A monster, it walks among you and you do not bat an eye!" Ladan gripped the basket of coins and buttermilk, stared as the man pulled his wife away. 

No one had ever called her anything so terrible. No one had ever looked at her and been afraid. 

_She_ had never been afraid. And she suddenly was.

Her mother found her behind the house, twisting daisies into dozens of ringlets that went up her arms, hung on her looping horns. "It is nothing to think on," ma said. "They are unlucky in Ferelden. The Blight has burned them."

"Ma, what _is_ the Blight--"

"Nothing for you to worry about, sweet. Nothing to think about anymore. Where's that buttermilk? I'll make biscuits for dinner." And just like that, she could be made to worry about nothing. She learned to do it on her own, eventually. Came in handy when a subject needed to be changed, when a person needed to be misdirected. Ma wouldn't have liked it, but ma wasn't the one making the hard choices, later on. 

Ma was the one making biscuits for dinner, and Ladan went to bed happy. 

 

 

 

When she joined the Valo-kas, they teased her for her size. Runt of a Vashoth, they called her, but only at first, even though she was only hairs smaller than the rest. Ladan let the words slide right off. _Nothing to think on,_ ma would have said, like she always did. And Ladan could hear her mother's words in her head so clearly, almost all of the time. She wondered if her parents were still hurt, still wounded that she did not take up the life they had, did not want to settle and make play at being a Marcher. 

Good people, Marchers.

Sweet songs, rough faces, gentle voices.

They let her pick her weapon, tried to push her toward the daggers, toward the bow. "Runt," said Behsaad -- he kept the weapons, divied them up and handed them out -- "Pick something, haven't got all day." Ladan nodded and turned back to the wall. She didn't want daggers, and she didn't want a bow. She didn't want a sword either, there wasn't anything here for her, nothing she could love -- 

_Except._

Except that. _That._ That beautiful axe, leaning against the wall. She bent down and hefted it into her hands, and her muscles screamed. 

"Too heavy for you," Behsaad told her, but she took it anyway. 

" _Ataash varin kata._ "

Behsaad laughs. "There's no glory in mercenary work, _imekari._ Get out of here, you're not the only one who needs to bite off more than they can chew today." Ladan only shrugged.

She kept it. A lot of the others ended up choosing something else after a while, but she kept her axe. 

"Runt brought her flower hatchet," they all said, because she twisted wildflowers around the handle. They laughed until she took out a pack of wolves on her own -- flowers and all.

 

 

 

They put her in charge of the group hired to work the Conclave. "Runt, don't get anyone killed," Katoh joked. Gave her a hearty smack on the back, jostled her to the bone. "Don't forget that flower hatchet." 

She lost the flower hatchet, though. Just like she lost her men. Standing in the green, smoky underworld, she stood and looked for them, but they were nowhere to be found. Nothing but -- _spiders._ Spider scrambling after her. She couldn't find her axe, couldn't find her footing, either, as she scrambled up the rocks. And that woman, with her arms stretched out.

_Ataash varin kata._

Her left hand burned, and the green sky faded, and all became darkness.

 

 

 

"I am Ladan," she said, when the Seeker asked. "Who are you?"

The woman seemed surprised, but she nodded. "I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry."

"Very formal."

"It is my title. One of them, at least."

"How lucky for you," Ladan said. "To be so prolific."

The woman must have thought her sarcastic, but Ladan couldn't have been more earnest. It wasn't often she got tied up and then released. It was nice to know she was even alive. But her hand ached, and so did her heart. The good people she'd lost. All the others who had died. "All those people..." she said again, and Cassandra turned to her with hard eyes.

"It is why we must continue on. Come. We must test your mark on something smaller than the breech. There are others waiting for us." Cassandra led her to an icy, frozen patch of lake, where her men were being attacked by demons. The woman pulled out her sword, did not suggest that Ladan join her. But she saw the axe in the snow, and she picked it up.

It was hardly her flower hatchet, but for now, it would do. 

"I suppose," the Seeker said later. "That I cannot expect you not remain defenseless." Cassandra looked over the weapon. "Is that what you would prefer to wield?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yes, it is. I lost mine back...back there." She looked at the axe in her hands. It was crudely made, the top incredibly heavy. But this time, her arms didn't burn. She gripped it tight. "It'll do the trick."

Cassandra nodded. "Then we press on."

 

 

 

Ladan was so happy to find another Marcher, so happy to see a face she knows from the back of da's books -- she picked Varric Tethras up and swung him around. 

" _Easy,_ " he said, laughing and pounding his chest. "Always nice to meet a fan."

"But you're a _Marcher!_ "

Varric shook his head. "I'm from Kirkwall," he said. "Marcher second." 

Ladan frowned. "Oh." 

Varric's face fell a moment, before he smiled and put a hand on her arm. "You miss home." 

"No," she said quickly, because you couldn't be homesick with the Valo-kas. _Long ways from your dirty Marches now, eh runt?_ "I don't." She picked up her axe again and straightened her back. 

 

 

 

They called her the Herald of Andraste, after. Ma always said Andraste was a good story, but they didn't do much in the way of praying. Da talked a lot about dragons, but they didn't mention the Qun to her, didn't press her into anything. Things like that didn't matter when you had work to do in the morning. When there were lessons and chores. 

But they called her the Herald, and she stood a little straighter. Da would have been disappointed if she let them down. Da would wanted her to do what they asked of her. She went to Josephine, after, and wondered if she could write to them. 

"But of course, Herald." Josephine smiled, and she had nice, soft eyes that made Ladan think of ma, just a bit. "They will know that you are safe." 

 

 

 

_Sweet one. Little thing. Ladan._

Back in the snow.

_There once was a farmer who had three daughters, and in the winter he did go adventuring._

Shivering.

"There once was a daughter, who had no sense," she whispered, and began to laugh through the cold.

A long shadow fell over her.

"There you are, _imekari._ " Bull leaned down and lifted her into his arms, shouting over his shoulder, " _Found her!_ "

"Thank the Maker!" She could hear Cullen stomping through the snow, Varric hollering behind her, the cheer of the men. She caught Cassandra's eyes, her face twisted in grief, before sleep finally took her.

 

 

 

"Will they follow me?" she asked, and Cassandra gave her a smile. 

"They will."

"I'm not...not--"

"Whatever you are, it does not matter. You are their leader. They will follow." She pressed the sword into her hands, and Ladan took it. 

Da would be proud.

She raised it, and below her, they cheered.


End file.
